Remember the mid 90’s when several melodic/ska punk bands were born like mushroom after the rain. Especially in Sweden from where bands like No Fun At All, Refused, Millencolin used to hail from and have a real major impact on other bands of the same kind wolrdwide. Ignite from Orange Country can without out doubts be ranked to the melo/ska punk genre. Actually the band got started out in the mid 90’s when that type of punk stuff was quite succesful. Obviously the early stage of the career was quite hectic for the five piece combo as the band put out a couple of times in a short time before ending up to the four year hiatus. Until 2000 Ingite got re-activated to release the third album before going to another six year hiatus.

On OUR DARKEST DAYS the Orange Country ska punkers offer a lesson of a 14 track of quite harmless, but above all melodic and joy punk stuff however being a mix of rock, ska, hardcore and melo punk. Obviously any radical changes haven’t been made during these years as each song on the album sounds vital and streams a lot of positive energy. Any angry or aggrove riff by riff written can’t be heard that several modern metalcore bands seem to have and use in their own stuff. Instead it could be said OUR DARKEST DAYS is like a flashback to the 90’s when melodic/ska based punk tunes used to dominate the world.

Vocalist Zoli Teglas’ voice at least made me recall as well as assossiacate them to in a way or another to the legendary Bad Religion who kind of started this type of melo punk style. Even though most of songs are played quickly thru with the passion, however there are noticeable catchy hooks in songs making the listening more enjoyable. It is quite logical to expect from them to express the standpoint of their own about political issues and in general various topics dealing with social issues.

It is quite astonishing that Century Media still find this kind of melodic punk stuff temptating to release. However listening to Ignite is a real relief exception compared to millions of metalcore outputs coming out nowadays.